I haven't seen anything like that. I think the most likely explanation is that you need to regenerate your map files. Try running Hexoshi with the "-m" option. You should also do this any time there are any changes to the rooms.

If that isn't it, can you post a screenshot, or alternatively save the map with the "-s" option and post that?

The first poll has concluded, and the results are in. Of the 25 eligible voters, 12 voted and 13 abstained. The results were as follows:

1. 5 votes (36%)2. 1 vote (7%)3. 8 votes (57%)

So the first task we will work on is: Add Anneroy’s new abilities. Thank you to everyone who voted!

Progress Report

I had Monday and Tuesday available this week, so I dedicated both days to Hexoshi’s development. I timed myself for 3 hours of work on Milestone 1’s goals, though I also spent several hours on some extra things which I did not time myself doing. The following developments occurred:

* 9 new rooms have been added, bringing the total number of rooms to 23.* A message is now shown the first time you activate a warp pad explaining that you can press “up” to teleport (similar to the messages seen when powerups are collected).* I made sloped versions of the stone tiles. they can be seen below the E-tank to the left of the Handheld Map.* Support for “map hints” to change the way the map is generated has been added. These hints are used in some of the new rooms. Their intended purpose is to enable the creation of non-rectangular rooms.* Lines of Code – a track which was previously rejected because of its loudness war syndrome – has been added back in for use in the credits screen, where this isn’t so much of a problem.* Support and graphics for useless artifacts has been added. These can be used sparingly to add some purpose to corridors designed to take players in the wrong direction, and to otherwise add filler to the game. It can also be a handy way to put easter eggs into the game.

Other Notes

Someone contacted me and asked if there is a mailing list to discuss voting issues. Unfortunately, there currently is not. However, I do want voters to discuss these issues, especially more important ones like the next one, so from now on I will open an issue on Hexoshi’s GitLab page for discussing each poll. The corresponding issue will be linked to both in the nomination phase announcement and in the voting phase announcement.

Although it seems a bit early, I think it's a good idea to begin the nomination phase for the question:

What new enemies should be added to Hexoshi for Milestone 1?

The nomination phase will last until January 20. During this phase, anyone (regardless of whether or not you are registered to vote) can nominate any number of candidates for possible choices on the ballot. Nomination does not guarantee appearance on the ballot; that decision is ultimately up to me. However, this is your chance to share and discuss your ideas.

Please either send your nominations to onpon4@riseup.net, or post them to the following issue on GitLab (which can also be used to discuss the question):

Because of the nature of this particular issue and the fact that nominations only started coming in a few days ago, I have decided to extend the nomination phase for enemies until January 27. Please feel free to send any ideas for nominations you have to onpon4@riseup.net, or post them here:

To be clear, the new enemies issue will continue to be discussed on GitLab, while future issues will have either an associated task or an associated bug on the Savannah project page.

Savannah supports a lot of features that GitLab does not. In particular, I have started using the Task Manager to track our progress on the goals of Milestone 1, and I will be posting updates to the news feed in addition to Crowd Supply from now on; you can subscribe to the news feed here:

Other than the move to Savannah, the news is relatively modest. Luke has begun to work the ball form, and I have completed some more rooms and made some other enhancements to Hexoshi. The time I recorded myself working on Hexoshi since the last update was 1 hour and 30 minutes. This is inaccurate since I forgot to time myself a few times, but that's fine; I'll just say a wizard did it. So officially, the amount of time I've spent in total is 4 hours and 30 minutes. Changes since the last update include the following:

* Six more rooms were added, bringing the total number of rooms to 30.* The E-tank to the left of the Handheld Map has been replaced with a useless artifact. I felt that it was too early to give a health upgrade there.* The map disk near the second warp pad is now complete (i.e. the rooms it maps out now all exist).* A "map" key has been added (assigned to "M" by default).* Powerups are now removed from the map when collected. Because of the nature of the map, this cannot be retroactively applied to old save files; you will have to start a new game.* The URL in the credits has been updated to "hexoshi.nongnu.org".

There is a problem with the ball control when using analogic stick, down will transform into ball right away, so for instance I cannot jump and shoot down anymore, it morph me into ball. Using the cross it works fine.

Also, using wall jump in a 1 tile wide hole I managed to get stuck in the wall. Maybe it’s already a known bug, not sure.

There is a problem with the ball control when using analogic stick, down will transform into ball right away, so for instance I cannot jump and shoot down anymore, it morph me into ball. Using the cross it works fine.

Thanks for reporting this. I've been testing only with a keyboard, so I didn't even think about it. I think I know the cause; I'll see what I can do about it.

Also, using wall jump in a 1 tile wide hole I managed to get stuck in the wall. Maybe it’s already a known bug, not sure.

Nope, that was unknown; I just coded the wall jump a few hours ago. I'll look into it.

It will not have anything to do with Milestone 1 of Hexoshi, but itsupports my other game development efforts, and if I get enough fundingthrough it, I may be able to make the Milestone 2 crowdfunding campaignentirely focused on raising money to commission art. That would make thecampaign smaller (and therefore more likely to succeed), and it wouldalso make the way Milestone 2 is developed much more flexible.

In any case, the voting results. I assigned a number of points to eachchoice based on where people placed them among their preferences: firstchoice got five points, second choice got four points, and so on, upuntil the fifth choice, which got one point. The top three choices bythis metric were:

1. Iridia (17 points)2. Aoshi (14 points)3. Ulu (7 points)

The voter turnout was low (again), but that's OK. Iridia was one of myfavorite options too, so Iridia it is.

But that's not all; there have also been a *ton* of new developmentssince the last progress report last month. These are the most notabledevelopments:

* Iridia is finished. A temporary ending, a macguffin, has been included in the last accessible room (which will lead to the second major area in Milestone 2).* Fixed a defect in map scrolling that caused it to take almost a second with each interval (and it would have gotten even worse later on).* Changed Anneroy's ball form to behave a lot more like a ball. This requires an update to xsge_physics, so do remember to update that to version 0.13 or later if you haven't already! Rolling down a slope as a ball now allows you to get a massive speed boost, while rolling up a hill requires a running - or, rather, rolling - start.* Added a statistic for the number of enemy types killed. It's pretty meaningless right now, but later on, it will be another useful indicator of progress.* Added an animation to show that decompressing failed when it does (due to being in a one-tile-high space).* Added a "lax" to decompressing, so if you're close to a 1-tile-wide hole but not quite there, you shift over.* Fixed a defect in wall jumping: you jumped a shorter or higher height in an inconsistent way based on when you released the jump button. Variable heights was not supposed to be possible, so it has been removed and the wall jump height has been reduced.* It is now possible to compress while running; simply double-tap "down" as you would if you were in the air.* Added a warning if you attempt to leave the game when there is unsaved progress.* Added a "diagonal aim lock" option, which reverses the function of the "aim diagonal" button.* Changed the way game data is saved so that it is more robust. Unfortunately, this was a significant enough change that old saves would crash the game, so any save files in the old format are automatically deleted.* Added some map walls to room 5 and gave it some camera guides to better hide the hidden artifact found in it.* Added the Hedgehog Hormone, which briefly causes spikes to grow out of Anneroy's ball form, damaging enemies and protecting Anneroy from damage by contact with enemies (but not protecting from bullets).* Fixed a bug in map generation that caused some map objects to be drawn multiple times. The practical effect of this was to prevent artifact indicators from being erased.* Added a sound (taken from Minetest) for when stones are broken.* Pulled an updated Spanish translation from Jorge.* Changed the credits screen to black instead of that purplish color.* Changed the way stones generate fragment objects to limit how much this slows down the game. Basically, if the frame rate is low, the number of fragments generated is reduced to prevent it from getting any lower.* The E-tank in room 10 has been changed so that it requires a ball jump ability combined with the hedgehog spikes to obtain. Previously I intended for it to be obtained with a wall climbing ability, but I have found the task of implementing wall climbing physics too complex to be worthwhile.* Fixed a crash caused by attempting to pause the game with a game controller.* Fixed a bug that allowed Anneroy to be in a "rolling" state while walking.* Switched the spike stone image to make it more visually distinct.* Added the Atomic Compressor sprite.* Added links to my Patreon page and the Milestone 1 CrowdSupply campaign to the title screen.

Milestone 1 is on the horizon, but much more work needs to be done. Stay tuned!

It probably looks on the outside like Hexoshi is dormant, and I must apologize for that. Regardless of appearances, I am actually busier than I have been in a long time, since I have recently started re-learning Japanese (successfully!) and also started an interesting new side-project called Tangomon. I haven't been working on Hexoshi much, but that's because most of the work that's left is graphical improvements, which not only has Luke been working diligently on, he's even done extra improvements for free! Those extras consist of a new warp pad, as well as a WIP full make-over of Iridia to give it a more defined identity.

As for actual tasks of Milestone one, the following new images have been finished:

* Replaced the "diagonal aim lock" option with a "Metroid-style aiming" option.* Changed the map disk near the second warp pad to make it show the whole chamber leading to the Atomic Compressor.* Made some layout changes so that it is easier to find the Handheld Map (or, rather, more difficult not to find it).* Adjusted Anneroy's handling a bit.* Added a "worm" enemy which, when Anneroy gets close to it, pops out of the ground and then pops back in. It is based on an animation on OpenGameArt.org that was pointed out to me. It doesn't quite match the style of Hexoshi, fixing that is now a task being assigned to Luke (as one of the enemies he works on).

By the way, as far as tasks go, I have opened tasks for the next two enemies that will be added to Hexoshi: the primary antagonists, the Mantanoids, and a dog-sized scorpion-like alien which is the mantanoids' equivalent to a dog. Both of these enemies will be recurring enemies, seen throughout the entire planet Anneroy is exploring at various strength levels. Luke is currently working on the scorpion enemy.

As always, thank you for your support and patience. Milestone 1 will be arriving a little later than I hoped, but it is on the horizon. If you want to continue to support my game development efforts after Milestone 1, or if you want to support my other libre game development efforts, please consider contributing to either my Patreon page or my Liberapay page:

Like I said the last time you asked, I am open to the possibility of a Sonic-esque lesser partner that can follow Anneroy around and help with fighting and other things, controllable by a second player. But either someone needs to draw and animate that, or I need to see enough support from multiple people for including it as a Milestone 2 goal to be reasonable. Roughly, I would guess that the cost of the animation would be between $100-$500, depending on its design and abilities. If you can cover that (either by drawing and animating it yourself or by paying an artist to do so), or if you can demonstrate that many people want this feature, I will make it a goal of the next milestone.

I like that composition, but it's too consistently loud because of dynamic range compression. Hexoshi is designed in such a way that one track is heard on a loop for a long period of time, so this is unacceptable; it can make the listening experience unenjoyable or even painful for the player. I cut out a loopable portion from Deus Ex Tempus (00:08.972-03:35.322) in Audacity, and listening to it on loop a few times gave me a headache.

I think a visual demonstration might help show what I mean:

It doesn't quite look like a log, but the loudness in this is just constant and the maximum volume is reached ridiculously frequently. Compare that with the rendition of Late Night Runaway used in Hexoshi right now:

That reaches max volume only occasionally, and it varies in volume. It even goes completely silent in some places. This is good; it helps ensure that the listener isn't going to get a headache after the fifth loop. These same properties are also seen in the other compositions I am currently considering.

Of course, it's possible to fix this, since the .flp file is provided for Deus Ex Tempus. It could be that simply lowering the volume at export time would be sufficient, depending on how it is composed (in fact, I had to do this for Late Night Runaway). Unfortunately I am not equipped to do this; I am able to import the .flp file in LMMS, but not play it, I assume because FL Studio samples are needed which I don't have. If anyone else would like to take a stab at this, including Trevor Lentz himself, I would appreciate it, because this really would be a good music choice if the problem with listening to it on a loop is fixed.

That's an improvement; there's a little more dynamic range now, but mostly it's just the same thing reverse-amplified. I think there may have been a communication error; it's not the overall loudness that's the problem, rather it's the dynamic range, i.e. the difference between quiet and loud. There needs to be a contrast there, otherwise it's all equally loud and it becomes exhausting to listen to after a while.

Also, and this is far less important, but the edited version doesn't loop properly and I wasn't able to edit it so that it would; too much is chopped off at the end and that makes it sound like it's stopping abruptly.

But I don't want to encourage Trevor to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to fix this at this time, because I'm not even confident that I'm going to use it in Hexoshi even if this problem is fixed. At best, it would just get added to the Ideas page, and it wouldn't be any more likely to actually be in the game than the five others that have already been OKed. If simply re-exporting at a lower volume didn't solve the problem, that's fine; we can come back to it later if it turns out that Deus Ex Tempus is the perfect music for something.